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Cable design is a lot like creating a pizza

If you look at the construction of an RCA cable it can be very simple or can be very complicated. Eg. Audio quest higher end interconnect cables are extremely creative, the diagram on their website is visually stunning.

Ultimately, Cable design in many cables involves coloring the tonal signature. Cooking a pizza is all about making all the ingredients come together so it tastes amazing. Some do it a lot better than others and Pizza is a lot cheaper.

For cables, There are conductors, drain wires, shielding, Airfilled tubes, different gauges, etc…. Then there’s the copper strands which can be very detailed and numerous and twisted. So much going on.

With pizza you have cheese and sauce and spices and the dough and it’s all mixed together with all kinds of variation. Ultimately the sauce makes or breaks the success of a pizza slice.

With audio cables, hi end Cable designers are endlessly trying different ways to do all this. In the end they find something that sounds kind of nice. They may not know exactly why it does sound the way it does.

So that’s my take on Pizza design and cable design.

jumia

Showing 5 responses by soix

soix
8,807 posts
 

Is there a point to this?  And how is this different from any other audio component? Why limit it to just cables?  Audio, like pizza, is what it is.  Again, what’s your point here?

soix
8,807 posts
 

Sorry, but the farther you get from NYC the worse the pizza (and bagels) gets. Although I do admit having lived in Chicago their deep dish is yummy for what it is, but it’s not real pizza. Ehem. California pizza? Oxymoron. As they say in Brooklyn, fuggetaboudit!

soix
8,807 posts
 

It serves to illustrate how ridiculous cable design is. Especially if they can't explain what they've done Beyond marketing rhetoric.This also applies to preamplifiers and amplifiers.  And here even more complicated, and many are profoundly confused as to why components sound the way they do. Mostly we are all paying for fantasy creations of clever and very smart creators of complex electrical Devices.  
And like many of us I pay up for this stuff. Sounds better, no idea why. 

Maybe you’d be better off on Reddit, then you wouldn’t have to bother yourself with all this inconvenient “thinking” stuff.

 

soix
8,807 posts
 

 

 

Naples and other Italian places seem to make a decent pizza. And there are other countries that have decent pizzas. But I could see how NTC might be better than South Dakota or South Carolina. And I would not expect NYC to do BBQ like other places.

@holmz Well, I was talking about the US, but yeah Italy kinda makes good pizza too.  And no, despite having a few very good BBQ restaurants you’re absolutely correct that NYC can’t hold a candle to the south when it comes to BBQ. I still stick by my assertion that it’s tough to get a decent bagel outside of the NYC area and pizza absolutely gets worse in the US as you head west or south from NYC. Sticking to my guns there.

 

soix
8,807 posts
 

If I’m gonna spend a couple thousand dollars on some so-called hiend cables I’m gonna need a better explanation of what I’m getting.

Why? Do you need someone to tell you what pizza tastes best to you too? Read reviews and user feedback and buy used cables at 50% off retail that exhibit the sound characteristics you’re after or buy from direct sellers with nice trial periods. If they don’t work out just sell or return them. Why are you over complicating this? Cables are by far the easiest components to try for next to nothing. Take advantage of it!

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